New Study Marks Trouble For Google+

A new study out from RJ Metrics indicates low user activity and weak engagement for Google’s social network Google+.

Google, running a little late to the party on this one, released their version of a social network late last year. Google+ adoption, if you believe Google’s number has been fairly strong, with 170 million users already. Of course that pales in comparison to Facebook at 900 million users.

After a somewhat slow start, Google has decided to put a considerable effort behind Google+. Google looks at Google+ as a backbone of it’s entire company and has been moving to Google Plus-ify everything it can. You will find Google+ wrapped into more and more Google services as we move along.

So with Google banking so much on Google+, this new study should be very troubling. 30% of users who make a pubic post never make a second one. You would think with Google being Google and with a majority of the world using it to search for information daily, it would have a huge leg up on moving users into its social network. I’m sure that’s what they thought to, but while you can lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink. 170 million users in the short time of Google+ existence is impressive, but users are just not taking to the service. There is nothing inherently wrong with Google+, it’s quite nice technically, but I think we are starting to reach social network fatigue. With Twitter and Facebook and YouTube already so dominant, how much time and energy do people have for yet another social network. The answer, I believe, is little.

So the key question we always want to address here is what does this mean for you and your business? Do you need to put time and attention into Google+ for your business or can you safely ignore it? Unfortunately, this is not as easy question. If it were anything but Google, I would say ignore it for now, but since it is Google, you cannot simply turn a blind eye. Google+ profiles and activity is starting to show up in Google search and that alone is powerful enough for me to say, you should have at least some presence on Google+. Search, as we know is the critical component and anything attached to that is automatically important.

Google+ supports brand/company pages with multiple administrator support and your company should have a Google+ page. Unfortunately, Google+ does not support automatic posting via other applications, so everything you do on Google+ is a manual process. I would try to post at least some content but I wouldn’t put anything but the most limited time into it at this point. Social media is so fluid, however, Connected World Media will be keeping a close eye on things in case conditions shift as they can in a moments notice.